Duke computer scientist Cynthia Rudin, an artificial intelligence scholar, has concerns … where she runs the Interpretable Machine Learning Lab.

Every tech trend has a natural lifespan. It starts on the fringes, builds momentum with early adopters, then moves into the mainstream. Subsequently, you get some start-up successes, then a rush of VC-funded efforts, then an overshoot in expectations, and finally a settling-in to some kind of status quo. But "AI" is a different animal. It doesn't follow these rules because its definition is fuzzy.

Developments in artificial intelligence are now "a runaway train" and urgently require the attention of philosophers and other humanists, a professor has argued. Mark Kingwell, professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto, spoke on "Humans and Artificial Intelligence – What Happens Next?" at an alumni event in London. "A'singularity' is demonstrably coming when our attempts to enhance our own intelligence are outstripped by artificial entities," he told the audience. "Yet there are no such things as neutral technologies. We have to ask what interests they serve."